Elizabeth Warren Is Turning Out as Good as Promised

Economy  

Truthdig / By Robert Scheer

Elizabeth Warren Is Turning Out as Good as Promised

The Massachusetts senator is now championing legislation that would cut the student loan rate to the near zero that the big banks enjoy when borrowing money.

 

May 14, 2013  |  

This story originally appeared at Truthdig. 
 
Elizabeth Warren does great email. One payoff of my pittance of a contribution to her grass-roots funded campaign—I regret not contributing more—is that I am regularly alerted by the new Massachusetts senator to the favoritism of our Congress toward Wall Street.

That’s how I was reminded this week that Congress is about to let the interest rate charged for new student loans double to 6.8 percent at a time when the too-big-to-fail banks that caused the Great Recession continue to be bailed out at the rate of 0.75 percent. Yes, the banks pay less than 1 percent for money that we the taxpayers lend them. I know that such statistics are thought to be boring, but as Warren explained, the rate that students will have to pay “is nine times higher than the rate at which the government loans money to the big banks.”
The student loan interest rate that had been temporarily cut in half back in 2007 was once again set to double, but instead of pushing for the status quo as Congress did last year, Warren has upped the ante with legislation that would cut the student loan rate way down to the near zero that the big banks enjoy. As Warren put it in her characteristically no bull style:

“The federal government is profiting off loans to our young people while giving a far better deal to the same Wall Street banks that crashed our economy and destroyed millions of jobs. That’s why I’ve introduced the Bank on Students Loan Fairness Act as my first bill in the Senate: To allow students to borrow money at the same rate as the biggest banks.

” … Why should the big banks get a nearly-free ride while people trying to get an education pay nine times more?” Warren asked. “It isn’t right.”

The justification of near zero rates of interest for the banks is that they will make loans available that will stoke the economy, but quite the opposite has happened. The banks have been slow to make housing and business loans while feathering their own nests with outsized executive bonuses and costly acquisitions of other financial institutions. In contrast, student loans amounting to more than $1 trillion exceed the total outstanding credit card debt in the U.S. and represent a major contributor to consumer purchasing power.

Students actually spend their loan money on surviving as consumers in a tight economy, while learning skills needed for the economy of the future. On the other hand, the already too-big-to-fail banks have used the government’s free money to become even more obscenely powerful.

Then, too, the federal government’s enormous subsidy to the banks extends far beyond the provision of low-interest money. The so-called quantitative easing program, now reaching into the trillions of dollars of government subsidy, continues at the astounding rate of $85 billion in Federal Reserve expenditures every month to take toxic assets off the books of the banks and to otherwise float the very financial institutions that, as Warren never tires of pointing out, caused the great meltdown of our economy.

How astonishing to have a public servant who actually cares to inform the public about the inner workings of the system of crony capitalism that has wedded big government with big business. This comes at the expense of the free market that corporate lobbyists delight in invoking as an ideal while they subvert it as a reality.

Those seeking to join Warren in taking a stand on behalf of students attempting to survive in an economy that the bankers have come close to destroying should get behind her bill. Unless Congress acts, student loan rates will automatically double in less than two months.

They should also heed Warren’s call to aid the campaign of Ed Markey to fill the other Senate seat from Massachusetts made available by the resignation of John Kerry to become secretary of state. As a long serving member of the House, Markey distinguished himself by being a leader in the battle against the radical deregulation of Wall Street. Markey, as early as 1992 when he was chairman of the House subcommittee on telecommunications and finance, sounded the alarm on the danger of the unregulated derivatives in housing mortgages and other collateralized debt obligations that ended up causing the Great Recession.

It would be great if Massachusetts, the home of the real tea party revolt, could now elect a second senator with a powerfully informed record of serving the consumer interest. As Warren put it, “Ed will fight for accountability on Wall Street—to end ‘Too Big to Fail’ and ‘Too Big to Jail’ once and for all.” She could use Markey’s help, and so could we.

Robert Scheer is the author of The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street (Nation Books)..

Information, Cognition, and Social Evolution: The Prospects of an Enduring Democracy

Information, Cognition, and Social Evolution

The Prospects of an Enduring Democracy

by Robert DePaolo / May 17th, 2013

The word democracy can be said to be both sacred and irrelevant; the former because it conjures up images of populist involvement, fair play, anti-tyrannical politics and equality, the latter because it only has meaning to the extent that the final, collective arbiter – the people – are capable of self-governance. Democracy is not a whimsical term, nor has it been a historical given. From the outset there was considerable skepticism on whether the Great American experiment would work. The French philosopher Voltaire believed such a populist system could only be sustained in small enclaves, that with social expansion, the alienation and sub-groupings resulting from geographically-driven diversity in mores, habits and values would lead to chaos.¹
 
Even Thomas Jefferson seemed to have misgivings about the capacity of America to endure. He too had misgivings about geographic, ethnic and cultural expansion, which was rather ironic given his purchase of the Louisiana Territory. In 1816 he discussed the concept of government “purity” which he defined as the degree of closeness between politicians and the people. His ideal – which he termed a “government of first grade purity” was one in which citizens enjoyed direct and frequent contact with their representatives, were well-informed about issues and thus were able to influence the decisions of representatives proactively. Realizing that America’s population would expand rapidly, Jefferson came to accept that the USA would have to settle for a government of “third grade purity,” whereby people would have to substitute trust for information and proactive influence.²
 
This was not a trivial matter to either Voltaire or Jefferson. Each felt that democracy could only work if people were informed and reasonable enough to themselves vote wisely. Since there was no compulsory public education during the lives of either man, the odds on an average citizen being able to read relevant material on policy would have been quite low, even if made available.

The message both men were trying to convey – and one stated by John Adams³ and others – was that democracy is a fragile thing, that reliance on the masses to direct the functions of government can be a rather tentative process. That, of course, is what led General Benjamin Lincoln to opine that only landowners (with a heavy investment in governmental revenues and policy) should be allowed to vote. It is what led to the formation of the US Senate (an ostensibly enlightened body that would insert higher reasoning skills into the process should the House and/or the public wax foolish) and to formation of the Electoral College.

Arguably, the single most salient factor implied in their writings was human nature. The question was (and remains) whether any democratic state can sustain itself, given the vicissitudes, limitations and influences on human behavior, cognition and emotion.

Criteria

That brings us to a discussion of the human elements needed to sustain a democratic society. There are a number of ways to approach this issue. One would be to focus on the need for a moral consensus influential enough to regulate behavior and maintain a duty of due care; i.e.,  fundamental feature of common law involving a broad societal agreement to abstain from harming others by intent or neglect. Another would espouse the importance of attaining a cultural frame of reference, so that each generation would be able to view themselves in a temporo-cultural context and come to know whether their society has progressed, regressed, evolved, led to upward mobility etc. That would include an awareness of the impact of events over time so people could truly recognize the traumas and halcyon days that define national experience. Finally, there would be some consideration of cultural phenomena such as music, art, literature, political trends, athletics – all those things cherished by the Ancient Greeks. Art would be particularly important since it is proof of free expression, of an informed, educated public with an aesthetic sense and it also demonstrates that potentially destructive urges have been channeled into pro-social outlets.

Science and Social Evolution

Absorbing all the above elements can be a daunting task, especially as individual and family lives becomes so complex as to supplant national concerns. Yet there is a way to address this issue. It is to be found in a scientific maxim known as Information Theory.

With respect to its impact on social evolution, Information Theory distinguishes between terms like “input,” “exposure,” and “media” and actual information. The latter is defined as a reduction of uncertainty. That means that some salient, distinctive code must emerge from a mass of noise to be viewed as information. The amount of information is measured in bits – each distinctive one representing a kind of code teased out of a mass.⁴ As an example; an answer to the question: Name the American president who helped establish the League of Nations… would entail one bit of information, since the only possible answer would be Woodrow Wilson. On the other hand, the question: Name the president who attended an Ivy League School, responded with force to a perceived military threat and was a sports enthusiast would entail at least three bits — John Kennedy, George Bush and Barack Obama.

Information Theory features several parameters. For instance, the larger the initial mass of noise or input the greater the amount of information attained with the emergence of a code or resolution because a larger amount of noise (undistinguished elements) equals a larger amount of uncertainty. With more initial uncertainty a greater reduction in uncertainty will result from encoding. As another example; finding your car in fifty space parking lot after a temporary memory lapse would comprise less information that finding a needle in a haystack – assuming the stack was a large one.

Human Nature and the Bit

The mind of a citizen operates according to Information Theory principles and that has bearing on social evolution, particularly in a democracy. For those minds to function optimally; i.e., according to the reasonable person standard, requires certain conditions. The most prominent being that the stimulus environment in the USA must lend itself to clear resolutions, with respect to moral values, politics, event impact, historical frame of reference and cultural itself.

The question then becomes: What conditions must exist for those trends to prevail? First, resolutions must be specific and clear. From a morass of inputs there must be the capacity to discerning readily what is right vs. wrong, civil vs unacceptable, artistic vs offensive, impactful vs. trivial. In other words a democratic society operates through the prism of human cognition and will either evolve or devolve in that context.

The Current Info-Climate

In a sense, it could be argued that he USA is heading in a devolutionary path, not because of liberal or conservative thought or due to Godlessness or fanatical religious adherence but because we might have reached the point where the flow of information is too rapid, voluminous and diverse to be encoded. It does not lend itself to resolution, which leads to cognitive and emotional lassitude within the populace. Such a condition could reach a point where young people growing up in this environment could become functionally unaware of what’s going on around them. In other words they might have a fleeting, barebones-associative recognition of events but be unable to adequately feel or interpret them.

Another aspect of information is also in play with regard to this question. Like money, information, can incur inflation. The more available it is, the less its value. As the amount of input increases, not only in volume but in terms of new gadgets, sources and voices the less meaningful it becomes until such time as a tendency toward societal forgetfulness and/or accompanied by apathy occurs. Events that might have impact, lead to personal growth, collective cultural memories, the creation of moral standards and national pride become fleeting, un-encoded and psychologically irrelevant and the citizen ends up with no sense of generation, time or place. He lives, he dies, and no signposts are available to mark the journey.

Conversely, a shortage of inputs makes those inputs more valuable, more esthetically and emotionally attractive to observers, and consequently more memorable. Ironically, a low level of input makes the human animal hungrier for discovery and indeed more educable. In such conditions, social mores, values, cultural staples of all kinds can more readily guide and /or channel human behavior.

The media explosion seen in America and around the world today might well be counterproductive with regard to the cognitive sustenance and enlightenment of the people. This is not an argument for censorship of specific ideas. It is a concern about the sheer volume of input on mind, belief, actions and emotions. Child developmental theorist Jean Piaget discovered that human cognitive growth requires the establishment of stable schemes; fixed ideas in mind that are resilient enough to invoke comparisons and reject or assimilate new inputs in terms of its prior parameters (1973).

Psycho-physiologist D.E. Berlyne wrote similarly that cognitive precursors to pleasure and creativity depend on fixed ideas with which new inputs can be compared, reworked or eschewed.⁵,⁶ A heavy and rapid input climate is somewhat antithetical to that process, thus dampens cognition. Fleeting inputs disallow time to process and consolidate values – one day a behavior pattern is viewed as socially unacceptable, the next (having been supported by celebrity-adherents) it becomes okay.

Through it all, ignorance and casuistry begin to infiltrate society. The people get overloaded. They see and hear more but know and feel less. They become increasingly more noise-distracted in their understanding of the world around them. Young students process inputs from various technological sources daily until such time as classroom lessons become less centrally important; just one strand of hay in the stack, indistinguishable from a plethora of meaningless signals arising from amidst an epoch of info-lation. Predictably, boredom and mental fatigue set in. as the young people take life on the fly. At that point the question then becomes whether the reasonable, well-informed person standard on which democracy hangs its hat is still reliable.

While at face value this might sound like nothing more than a hackneyed critique of the youth culture by an oldster there is data to support such musings. A study by the Kaiser Foundation showed that American students spend an average of from 7-10 hours a day using electronic devices,⁷ that there was a high correlation between number of hours of use and poor grades in school.⁸
 
If it were simply a case of more time being devoted to electronic gadgets and less time to academics the solution might be simple – reduce the time spent on the former. However, there is also the question of input volume and its effect on the decision making capacities of the citizenry. Inputs are not just a cognitive experience. They are emotional as well. When input is fleeting, rapid, voluminous and uncoded (i.e., low on societal impact due to its blend with myriad other inputs) it changes the temperament, indeed the psyche of the nation.

Society and the Psyche

Beyond the notion that cognitive development requires the acquisition of stable, lasting schemes⁹,¹⁰ is the Freudian description of ego and superego development.¹¹ Both require time and experiential constancy to consolidate. Lack of such a stable info-climate could result in a generation of introspectively deficient young people who lack the regulatory skills to self-monitor, self-restrain, self-critique and self regulate. Lacking such inner resources, they might become excessively dependent on outside stimuli – needing “positive reinforcement’ to carry out even basic responsibilities, becoming hyper-socialized to the point where talking, texting, and hanging with friends take precedence over self-development, initiative, creativity and achievement.
Is technology (more accurately technologically facilitated input-volume), responsible for weight problems, apathy, poor academic achievement and lack of chagrin arguably seen in many of today’s youth? While some research tends to support those conclusions¹² other factors might be at work. However, there is a strong correlation between the advent and proliferation of computer technology in American society and a decline in academic performance, personal responsibility, independence and initiative and such outcomes can and have been precursors to social decline.

Unfortunately the solution is less clearly defined than the problem. At face value the nation and its youth would benefit from less input. They’d have time to ponder, dream and self-actualize. Yet the carrying out of such a process seems unlikely given both entrenched habits/addictions and the constitutional premise of free expression (an extremely powerful combination). Parents could certainly limit time spent on electronic gadgets but that wouldn’t solve the problem of having innumerable TV cable stations, Internet news and entertainment outlets and texting mini-technologies that not only dominate the psychic landscape but also fuel the American economy.

It does seem evident that while all democratic societies must espouse freedom of expression, it is virtually impossible to sustain a viable nation without some level of indoctrination. In other words, there must be a core of skills and ethical premises that are encoded, felt and acted on by young and old. That includes taboos and the threat of that old strand-by, social ostracism, in response to outrageous behavior.

At face value that might seem to argue for teaching religious values in school. Obviously the constitutional tenet of separation of church and state prohibits that. The fact that the teaching of religion is prohibited in public schools would seem reasonable if not for the fact that students are not taught about law or ethics either. As a result moral values are not encoded in any sense, other than through families, which themselves operate within the same input climate as their children and the rest of society.

The constitutional framers developed a superb system of laws and a process by which laws could be amended to solve future problems in American society. Unfortunately the input glut now impinging on America youth and the potentially dismal future that portends for the USA is a problem that might turn out to be unsolvable in the final analysis.

1. Woolf, H.I. (1924) The Philosophical Dictionary: Voltaire. New York, Knopf. [↩]
2. Jefferson on “Purity” of Governmental forms. Jefferson expounded on this topic in a letter to Isaac Tiffany. August 26, 1816 from Monticello. Extracted from Teaching American History.org. [↩]
3. Notes on John Adams. Adams wrote a tome entitled A Defence of the Constitution of Government of the United States of America in 1778. He wrote in favor of republican government ideals but also opined that such a form of government could result in deleterious levels of conflict among opposing parties, thus requiring a strong central government to mediate between and among these factions. His support of this federalist premise –which back then referred to advocates of strong central government rather than the modern, arguably inaccurate interpretation of local/state-control, led to charges of his being a monarchist. [↩]
4. Cover, T.M. & Thomas, JA. (1991) Elements of Information Theory. First Edition. New York, Wiley – Interscience. [↩]
5. Berlyne, DE. (1971) Aesthetics and Psychobiology. New York Appleton-Century Crofts. [↩]
6. Berlyne, DE. (1960) Conflict, Arousal an Curiosity. New York, McGraw-Hill. [↩]
7. CBC News/Health study in 2007 indicated that 1/3 of population was obese and that those who spent 21 or more hours using electronic media were twice as likely to be obese. [↩]
8. Nusca, A. (2008) Kaiser Family Foundation. Study revealed that American youth aged 8-18 spent from 7-10 hours a day using electronic media devices and subjects in that 47 % of subject in that group attained grades at or below C in school – in contrast to the mere 21 % who spent less than 3 hrs per day and attained similar grades. [↩]
9. Piaget, J, & Inhelder, B. (1973) Memory and Intelligence. London. Routledge and Kegan Paul. [↩]
10. Branco, J.C. & Lourenco, O (2004) Cognitive and Linguistic Aspects in 5-6 years olds’ class inclusion reasoning. Psicologia Educacao Cultura 8 (2) 427-445. [↩]
11. Freud, S. (1923) The Ego and the Id. W. Norton & Co. [↩]
12. Forgione, P (1998) Study Conducted by the National Center for Educational Statistics under the title: Center for Educational Performance and Empower American Achievement in the USA. [↩]

MS Clinical Psychology, Practitioner in Neuro psychology, Clinical and Educational fields. Former Prof of Psychology NH University System, Author of several books and many articles, president of Filmmaking company Media Milestones. Read other articles by Robert.

This article was posted on Friday, May 17th, 2013 at 8:00am and is filed under General, Psychology/Psychiatry.

Twelve Things You Can Do To Fight Poverty Now

Published on Friday, May 10, 2013 by The Nation

 

Twelve Things You Can Do To Fight Poverty Now

by Greg Kaufmann

 

 
Farmworkers pick tomatoes in Immokalee, Florida. (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)This is a tough moment in the fight against poverty. 


The sequester is the latest chapter in a time-honored tradition of kicking the poor when they are down. A do-nothing Congress certainly isn’t going to do something about poverty without pressure from the grassroots. And it seems that the only way most of the mainstream media will pay attention to the more than one out of three Americans living below twice the poverty line—on less than $36,000 for a family of three—is if their lives make good fodder for tabloid television or play out in a courtroom drama.

That said, there are still plenty of people and groups fighting for real change, and plenty of ways you can get involved or stay engaged. I reached out to a handful of folks who dedicate their lives to fighting poverty in different ways. Here is what they asked people to do:

1) From Sister Simone Campbell, Sisters of Social Service, Executive Director of NETWORK: “Support an increase in the minimum wage to more than $11 per hour.”

What people don’t know is that a large percentage of people living in poverty are workers who support their families on very small salaries. In fact, 57 percent of individuals and family members below the official poverty line either worked or lived with a working family member in 2011.

Pope Francis said on May 1, 2013, that all workers should make wages that allow them to live with their families in dignity. Contact your Senators and Representative to urge them to vote for a minimum wage (one that's more than $11 an hour) and tipped minimum wage that reflect the dignity of all people.

2) From the Coalition of Immokalee Workers: “Tell Publix: Help end sexual harassment, wage theft, and forced labor in the fields—join the Fair Food Program today.” 

Until very recently, Florida’s fields were as famous for producing human rights violations—with countless workers suffering daily humiliation and abuse ranging from wage theft to sexual harassment and even forced labor—as they were for growing oranges and tomatoes.

Today, however, there is a new day dawning for farmworkers in Florida’s tomato fields. The CIW’s Fair Food Program is demanding a policy of zero tolerance for human rights abuses on tomato farms, and it’s working. The program sets the highest human rights standards in the fields today, including: worker-to-worker education on rights, a 24-hour complaint line and an effective complaint investigation and resolution process—all backed by market consequences for employers who refuse to respect their workers’ rights.
The White House recently called the exciting new program “one of the most successful and innovative programs” in the world today in the fight to uncover—and prevent—modern-day slavery; and just last week United Nations investigators called it “impressive” and praised its “independent and robust enforcement mechanism.”

As the veteran food writer Barry Estabrook put it, thanks to the Fair Food Program, the Florida tomato industry is on the path “from being one of the most repressive employers in the country…to becoming the most progressive group in the fruit and vegetable industry” today.

But we need your help to complete this transformation.

One of the country’s largest supermarket chains, Publix Super Markets, is refusing to support the Fair Food Program. Publix continues to buy tomatoes from growers in the old way, where workers have no access to the Fair Food Program’s proven protections. Rather than step up to the highest human rights standards, Publix continues to turn its back on the workers whose poverty helps fuel its record profits.

Tell Publix Super Markets CEO William Crenshaw to join the fight against human rights abuses in the US tomato industry.

3) From Ralph da Costa Nunez, President and CEO, Institute for Children, Poverty, and Homelessness: “Make a Personal Commitment to Helping Homeless Families.”

More than one-third of Americans who use shelters annually are parents and their children. In 2011, that added up to more than 500,000 people. Since 2007, family homelessness has increased by more than 13 percent. Indeed, there is a growing prevalence of child and family homelessness across America.

While it is important to track the federal, state and local policies that impact homelessness, we can’t forget about getting involved on a personal level with the growing numbers of families that are struggling since the Great Recession.

You can visit a local shelter, meet a homeless family and see first hand the damage poverty is doing to young mothers and children. Then, become a big brother or sister, a role model for these young families to help them dream again. You are meeting an immediate need while also helping to stem generational poverty.

You can also contact your local department of social services, United Way or religious organization to find out where the need is in your community. Also, speak with the homeless liaison at your local school to see what needs they have identified in your neighborhood. There are many ways that you (and your children) can help families right in your community. Here are a few other ideas.

4) From Dr. Deborah Frank, Founder and Principal Investigator, Children’s Healthwatch: “Fund the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) at the maximum authorized level.”

Research by Children’s HealthWatch has shown that energy insecurity is associated with poor health, increased hospitalizations and risk of developmental delays in very young children, and that energy assistance can be effective in protecting children’s health. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) provides low-income households with assistance in paying their utility bills—particularly those that must spend higher proportions of their income on home energy. To be eligible for LIHEAP, families must have incomes at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level—less than $35,000 annually for a family of four.

When Children’s HealthWatch compared children in families that do and do not receive LIHEAP assistance—after controlling for participation in SNAP and WIC—we found that children in families that received LIHEAP were less likely to be at risk of growth problems, more likely to have healthier weights for their age and less likely to be hospitalized when seeking care for acute medical problems.

As pediatricians and public health researchers, we at Children’s HealthWatch know that LIHEAP matters for the bodies and minds of young children. Even in these tough economic times, we believe it is critical that President Obama and Congress make a funding commitment that meets the heating and cooling needs of America’s youngest children.

But the President has proposed reducing funding for LIHEAP to $2.970 billion in his FY 2014 budget, down from $3.5 billion for the current fiscal year. (Even funding at the current level has left millions of households without the aid they need to cope with their home energy costs.) Please join the National Fuel Fund’s call to fund LIHEAP at $4.7 billion in FY2014. Although that level is insufficient to meet the full needs of vulnerable households, it will enable states to end a trend over the last few years of needing to reduce the number of households served, cut benefits or both. Contact the President and your Members of Congress today.

5) Sarita Gupta, Executive Director, Jobs with Justice/American Rights at Work and Co-Director, Caring Across Generations: “Support of a living wage and basic labor protections for home care workers.”

Caring Across Generations is a campaign that unites people to change the long-term care system that supports each of us, our family members and our neighbors, to live and age in our own homes and communities. One of the key ways we can strengthen this system is to protect the 2.5 million people working as care givers in the United States. With a projected future demand for an additional 1.3 million workers over the next decade, home care workers make up one of the largest occupations in the nation, yet many of them make below minimum wage.

In December 2011, at a White House ceremony surrounded by home care workers, employers and people who rely on personal care services, President Obama announced plans for new regulations that would at long last guarantee federal minimum wage and overtime protections for most home care aides. The moment capped decades of effort by advocates to revise the “companionship exemption,” which lumps professional care workers with teenage babysitters, excluding most home care aides from the basic labor protections that nearly all other American workers receive.

Following the White House announcement, the US Department of Labor published draft regulations in the Federal Register. During the public comment period, the proposed rule received 26,000 comments with almost 80 percent in favor of providing home care workers with basic labor protections like minimum wage and overtime pay. But today, over a year after the public comment period closed, we are still waiting for a final rule to be announced.

Join Caring Across Generations and all of our partner organizations in the effort to push for basic minimum wage and overtime protections for care workers, and help us in our final push to ensure that the Obama Administration issues this long-awaited regulation to give 2.5 million care workers a path out of poverty. Visit www.caringacross.org to get involved with the campaign.

6) From Judith Lichtman, Senior Advisor, National Partnership for Women & Families: “Urge Congress to pass the Healthy Families Act (H.R. 1286/S.631) and a national paid leave program”

More than 40 million workers in this country—and more than 80 percent of the lowest-wage workers—cannot earn a single paid sick day to use when they get the flu or other common illnesses. Millions more cannot earn paid sick days to use when a child is sick.

For these workers and families, paid sick days can mean the difference between keeping a job and losing it, or keeping food on the table and going hungry. Nearly one quarter of adults say they have lost a job or been threatened with job loss for needing a sick day. And, for the average worker without paid sick days, taking just 3.5 unpaid days off is equivalent to losing a month’s worth of groceries for their family. To make matters worse, the majority of new parents cannot take any form of paid leave of any length to care for a child, pushing many into debt and poverty. The United States is one of only a handful of countries that does not have a national paid leave standard of some kind.

In a nation that claims to value families, no worker should have to lose critical income or be pushed into poverty because illness strikes or a child or family member needs care.

Urge members of Congress to support the Healthy Families Act, legislation that would guarantee workers the right to earn paid sick days. And sign this petition calling on Congress to take up the national paid leave program workers and families urgently need. 

7) From Tiffany Loftin, President, United States Student Association (USSA): “Increase regulation of private student loans and hold Sallie Mae accountable for its role in the student debt crisis.”

Throughout the Great Recession, only one type of household debt grew: student debt.

In April 2012, student debt surpassed the $1 trillion mark, and now students owe on average nearly $27,000 by the time they graduate. As student debt and student loan defaults escalate at an unsustainable pace, private student loan lenders continue to increase their profit margins.

Sallie Mae is the largest private student loan lender and one of the chief profiteers off student debt, yet it faces minimal public scrutiny and accountability. With their sky-high interest rates, highly profitable government loan servicing contracts and predatory lending practices, they play a major role in keeping the American Dream out of reach for millions of borrowers.

Join USSA, the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP), Jobs with Justice/American Rights at Work, Common Cause, the American Federation of Teachers and others at the Sallie Mae shareholder meeting on May 30 in Newark, Delaware. 

We’ll introduce a shareholder resolution asking Sallie Mae to be more transparent and accountable about its lobbying efforts, affiliations and executive bonus structure—all part of a corporate strategy to increase their bottom line at the financial expense of borrowers. Sign up to attend the join the shareholder action here.

8) From Elizabeth Lower-Basch, Policy Coordinator, the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP): “Support Pathways Back to Work”

Even as the economy recovers, too many unemployed workers and individuals with low education and skill levels face a difficult job market. Nearly two out of five unemployed workers have been jobless for six months or more; 6.7 million youth are both out of work and out of school.

Subsidized and transitional jobs are a proven way to give unemployed workers the opportunity to earn wages, build skills and connect to the labor market, while also giving businesses an incentive to hire new employees when they might not be able to do so otherwise.

President Obama’s FY14 budget blueprint calls for the creation of a $12.5 billion Pathways Back to Work Fund that includes: investments in subsidized employment opportunities, support services for the unemployed and low-income adults, summer and year-round employment opportunities for low-income youth and other work-based employment strategies with demonstrated effectiveness.

Please share this letter with nonprofits, businesses or other organizations and ask them to sign on to join us in thanking President Obama for his support of subsidized and transitional jobs in the FY2014 budget, and asking the President and Congress to work together to ensure that the Pathways Back to Work Fund becomes law! (This sign on letter is only for organizations, but individuals are also encouraged to ask their Members of Congress to support the Pathways Back to Work Fund—click the “reintroduce” buttons here and here.)

9) From Marci Phillips, Director of Public Policy and Advocacy, National Council on Aging: “Invest in the Older Americans Act.”

The Older Americans Act encompasses a range of programs that enable seniors to remain healthy and independent, in their own homes and communities and out of costly institutions. Services include healthy meals, in-home care, transportation, benefits access, caregiver support, chronic disease self-management, job training and placement and elder abuse prevention.
Funding has not kept pace with the growth in need or numbers, and recent cuts before the sequester hit have further eroded investments in key services. About 10,000 people turn 65 each day, and those over 85 are the fastest growing segment of the aging population.

One in three seniors is economically insecure. Social Security accounts for at least 90 percent of the income of more than one-third of older adults, and there has been a 79 percent increase in the threat of hunger among seniors over the past decade. The average duration of unemployment for people 55 and older is almost 50 weeks—longer than any other age group. Over 75 percent of all older adults have at least two chronic conditions, and the average Medicare household spends $4,500 on out-of-pocket health care costs.

There is a real need to increase funding for Older Americans Act programs like Meals on Wheels and in-home care. Please share your stories of cuts affecting seniors, so we can share them with Congress and the Administration and protect investments in the Older Americans Act.

10) From Rebecca Vallas, Staff Attorney/Policy Advocate, Community Legal Services: "Tell Congress NO CUTS to Social Security and SSI through the Chained CPI."

While the "chained CPI" is often referred to as just a technical change, in truth it's a benefit cut for millions of seniors, people with disabilities and their families who rely on the Social Security system to meet their basic needs. Social Security retirement, disability and survivors benefits and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) serve as a vital lifeline, making up a significant percentage of total family income for many workers and families.

The average yearly benefit for the lowest quintile of earners receiving retirement benefits in 2010 was $10,206—and that represented 94 percent of their family income. Social Security Disability and SSI benefits are incredibly modest as well. The average SSDI benefit is about $1,100 per month in 2013, and the average SSI benefit is less than $550 per month. And for most disabled workers receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI), their benefits make up most or all of their income. Even the maximum SSI benefit ($710 in 2013) is just three-fourths of the federal poverty level for a single person, and a quarter of SSDI beneficiaries live in poverty.

The amount a person gets in Social Security or SSI benefits is adjusted annually based on the Social Security Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA). The chained CPI would slow the increase in the Social Security COLA, cutting benefits and eroding the purchasing power of seniors, people with disabilities and their families. Cuts under the chained CPI add up significantly over time. Since the effect of the chained CPI is cumulative, it would be especially hard on people with disabilities, since they typically begin receiving benefits at a younger age than retirees.

The chained CPI is not a more accurate measure of inflation for seniors and people with disabilities. It is based on a concept called the "substitution effect"—which assumes that when the price of one good goes up, a consumer will substitute a lower-cost alternative in its place (e.g., when the price of steak goes up, a person will buy hamburger instead). For Social Security and SSI beneficiaries who are struggling to make ends meet as it is, there’s no room for substitution—and no room for benefit cuts. Benefit cuts under the chained CPI would push beneficiaries to make impossible choices such as not paying the gas bill to afford the water bill, taking half a pill instead of a whole pill or eating two meals per day instead of three to afford the cost of a copay on a needed medication.

Low-income seniors and people with severe disabilities are already struggling and can't afford cuts. Send this email to Congress to tell them NO on the chained CPI, and to keep Social Security cuts out of any budget plan. For AARP's chained CPI calculator, click here.

11) From Jim Weill, President, Food Research and Action Center: “Tell Congress: Increase, Don’t Cut SNAP (Food Stamp) Benefits.”

SNAP is a great program—boosting food security, health and nutrition and lifting millions out of poverty and millions of others out of deep poverty. But as a National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine expert committee just found, for most families benefits simply aren’t enough to afford a healthy diet for the month. This means that the program isn’t doing as much for food security, poverty reduction, child development, disease prevention and health care cost containment as it could. And despite a series of Pinocchio-inspired political attacks on the program in the 2012 election season and in this year’s run-up to SNAP reauthorization as part of the Farm Bill, public support for the program is high: 73 percent of voters believe the program is important to the country; 70 percent say cutting it is the wrong way to reduce government spending; and 77 percent say the government should be spending more (43 percent) or the same (34 percent) on SNAP. This support crosses parties, demographic groups, and rural, urban, and suburban lines.

Here’s what you can do: Tell your Representatives and Senators that the right course for the nation is to improve food stamp benefits (and support at least the temporary benefit boost the President has proposed) and that they must oppose any SNAP cuts being considered by the Agriculture Committees in the “Farm Bill.”

12) From Debbie Weinstein, Executive Director, Coalition on Human Needs: “Tell Congress to stop harmful cuts to anti-poverty programs now.”

Across the country, federal “sequestration” cuts (aka mindless automatic reductions) are closing Head Start programs weeks early and canceling summer programs for poor 3 to 5 year old children; some Head Start centers are closing altogether or dropping children. Seniors are losing home-delivered meals or homemaker services that allow them to remain at home instead of being pushed into nursing homes. The long-term jobless are losing 10 to 20 percent of their meager benefits; in Maine, they decided to cut all unemployed people off of assistance 9 weeks early. One hundred forty thousand fewer families will get rental housing vouchers, despite waiting for help for years, which will contribute to rising family homelessness. Education is being cut, from pre-school to the Federal Work-Study Program (formerly “College Work-Study”) that helps students finance college through part-time employment. In Michigan, they are eliminating a $137 back-to-school clothing allowance for 21,000 poor children.
These cuts are wrong and foolish any way you slice it—they keep people poor, cost jobs and stall economic growth for everyone.

Send this email to your Representative and Senators and join hundreds of thousands who are fed up that Congress would ignore these problems while fixing just one thing—inconvenient delays at airports. Also, for weekly summaries of the impact of these sequester cuts, click here.

Standing for Communities: ‘The Power of Collective’ (from the Marguerite Casey Foundation via Equal Voice News)

© 2013 The Nation

Greg Kaufmann is a Nation contributor covering poverty in America.  He has been a guest on NPR, including Here & Now and Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane, and various local radio programs including the Matthew Filipowicz Show.  His work has also appeared on Common Dreams, Alternet, Tikkun.org, NPR.org, CBSNews.com, and MichaelMoore.com.  He previously worked as a staffer for the Kerry campaign, a copywriter and speechwriter for various Democrats in national and local politics, and as a screenwriter.  He serves as an advisor for the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

Survival of the ... Nicest?

05.04.13 - 10:13 AM

Survival of the ... Nicest?

by Eric Michael Johnson

 
(Photo by Harlan Harris.)


Eric Michael Johnson wrote the following article for How Cooperatives Are Driving the New Economy, the Spring 2013 issue of YES! Magazine. Eric is a doctoral student in the history of science at the University of British Columbia. His research examines the interplay between evolutionary biology and politics.


A century ago, industrialists like Andrew Carnegie believed that Darwin’s theories justified an economy of vicious competition and inequality. They left us with an ideological legacy that says the corporate economy, in which wealth concentrates in the hands of a few, produces the best for humanity. This was always a distortion of Darwin’s ideas. His 1871 book The Descent of Man argued that the human species had succeeded because of traits like sharing and compassion. “Those communities,” he wrote, “which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.” Darwin was no economist, but wealth-sharing and cooperation have always looked more consistent with his observations about human survival than the elitism and hierarchy that dominates contemporary corporate life.

Corporate culture imposes uniformity, mandated from the top down, throughout the organization. But the cooperative—the financial model in which a group of members owns a business and makes the rules about how to run it—is a modern institution that has much in common with the collective tribal heritage of our species.

Nearly 150 years later, modern science has verified Darwin’s early insights with direct implications for how we do business in our society. New peer-reviewed research by Michael Tomasello, an American psychologist and co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has synthesized three decades of research to develop a comprehensive evolutionary theory of human cooperation. What can we learn about sharing as a result?

Tomasello holds that there were two key steps that led to humans’ unique form of interdependence. The first was all about who was coming to dinner.
Approximately two million years ago, a fledgling species known as Homo habilis emerged on the great plains of Africa. At the same time that these four-foot-tall, bipedal apes appeared, a period of global cooling produced vast, open environments. This climate change event ultimately forced our hominid ancestors to adapt to a new way of life or perish entirely. Since they lacked the ability to take down large game, like the ferocious carnivores of the early Pleistocene, the solution they hit upon was scavenging the carcasses of recently killed large mammals. The analysis of fossil bones from this period has revealed evidence of stone-tool cut marks overlaid on top of carnivore teeth marks. The precursors of modern humans had a habit of arriving late to the feast.

However, this survival strategy brought an entirely new set of challenges:
Individuals now had to coordinate their behaviors, work together, and learn how to share. For apes living in the dense rainforest, the search for ripe fruit and nuts was largely an individual activity. But on the plains, our ancestors needed to travel in groups to survive, and the act of scavenging from a single animal carcass forced proto-humans to learn to tolerate each other and allow each other a fair share. This resulted in a form of social selection that favored cooperation: “Individuals who attempted to hog all of the food at a scavenged carcass would be actively repelled by others,” writes Tomasello, “and perhaps shunned in other ways as well."

This evolutionary legacy can be seen in our behavior today, particularly among children who are too young to have been taught such notions of fairness. For example, in a 2011 study published in the journal Nature, anthropologist Katharina Hamann and her colleagues found that 3-year-old children share food more equitably if they gain it through cooperative effort rather than via individual labor or no work at all. In contrast, chimpanzees showed no difference in how they shared food under these different scenarios; they wouldn’t necessarily hoard the food individually, but they placed no value on cooperative efforts either. The implication, according to Tomasello, is that human evolution has predisposed us to work collaboratively and given us an intuitive sense that cooperation deserves equal rewards.

The second step in Tomasello’s theory leads directly into what kinds of businesses and economies are more in line with human evolution. Humans have, of course, uniquely large population sizes—much larger than those of other primates. It was the human penchant for cooperation that allowed groups to grow in number and eventually become tribal societies.

Humans, more than any other primate, developed psychological adaptations that allowed them to quickly recognize members of their own group (through unique behaviors, traditions, or forms of language) and develop a shared cultural identity in the pursuit of a common goal.

"The result,” says Tomasello, “was a new kind of interdependence and group-mindedness that went well beyond the joint intentionality of small-scale cooperation to a kind of collective intentionality at the level of the entire society.”

What does this mean for the different forms of business today? Corporate workplaces probably aren’t in sync with our evolutionary roots and may not be good for our long-term success as humans. Corporate culture imposes uniformity, mandated from the top down, throughout the organization. But the cooperative—the financial model in which a group of members owns a business and makes the rules about how to run it—is a modern institution that has much in common with the collective tribal heritage of our species. Worker-owned cooperatives are regionally distinct and organized around their constituent members. As a result, worker co-ops develop unique cultures that, following Tomasello’s theory, would be expected to better promote a shared identity among all members of the group. This shared identity would give rise to greater trust and collaboration without the need for centralized control.

Moreover, the structure of corporations is a recipe for worker alienation and dissatisfaction. Humans have evolved the ability to quickly form collective intentionality that motivates group members to pursue a shared goal. “Once they have formed a joint goal,” Tomasello says, “humans are committed to it.”
Corporations, by law, are required to maximize profits for their investors. The shared goal among corporate employees is not to benefit their own community but rather a distant population of financiers who have no personal connection to their lives or labor.

However, because worker-owned cooperatives focus on maximizing value for their members, the cooperative is operated by and for the local community—a goal much more consistent with our evolutionary heritage. As Darwin concluded in The Descent of Man, “The more enduring social instincts conquer the less persistent instincts.” As worker-owned cooperatives continue to gain prominence around the world, we may ultimately witness the downfall of Carnegie’s “law of competition” and a return to the collaborative environments that the human species has long called home.


BEST COMMENT (community rating)

stewarjt • a day ago 

 

The basis of this research is entirely consistent with Marx's historical materialist methodology. In order to make history, humans must first live. In order to live they must labor. Human labor must continually alter nature's materials into forms suitable for satisfying needs and wants. It's nearly impossible that an individual can produce all of the use values necessary for his/her survival.
Therefore, there must be cooperation in production and a mutual transfer of the resulting use values. That is, the material production and reproduction of a society requires that there must be a social division of labor, i.e., society's total labor is allocated to qualitatively different productive activities in specific quantities and proportions. Society's material production and reproduction of life requires that humans cooperate with each other and mutually transfer the results of their productive activities.

Marx from the Introduction to "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy," "The further back we trace the course of history, the more does the individual, and accordingly also the producing individual, appear to be dependent and to belong to a larger whole. At first, the individual in a still quite natural manner is part of the family and of the tribe which evolves from the family; later he is part of a community, of one of the different forms of the community which arise from the conflict and the merging of tribes...Production by a solitary individual outside society – a rare event, which might occur when a civilised person who has already absorbed the dynamic social forces is accidentally cast into the wilderness – is just as preposterous as the development of speech without individuals who live together and talk to one another. It is unnecessary to dwell upon this point further."

And we all should know that Marx projected the future of humans as one of cooperation and not competition intrinsic to capitalism's bellum omnium contra omnes.